Yukari's Lament
by little miss BANANNA HEAD
Summary: This is set 12/11, aka the morning after deciding whether or not to kill Ryoji. In this version, Junpei gets violent, and Minato is a cinnamon bun worthy of love and appreciation. This is 3rd POV following Yukari around with a camera. Inspiration came from the cover pic. Enjoy! (UPDATE: IS NOW CONSIDERED PREQUEL TO MINATO'S PAIN, ANOTHER ONE-SHOT IN MY LIST)


12/11 – Morning after deciding whether or not to kill Ryoji

Morning came too soon for Yukari.

She woke up in stages; first being a slight awareness of being cocooned in warmth. The next thing she noticed was how the air felt chilling against her face. When she tried to open her eyes, it was like they were glued together. Eventually she managed to blink her tired eyes open. They stung from the icy air that came in from the open window. She wondered how she was so warm…

Her eyes began to slip shut…

A small sound pierced the silence.

The sound woke Yukari up completely. She tensed, looking down to see a head of blue hair. She instantly recognised the boy clinging to her in his sleep. Minato's arms wrapped around her in an inescapable grip, as though he fear she'd leave him while he slept. With one hand on her shoulder, Minato seemed to have surrendered fully into Hypnos' embrace.

Yukari's expression softened. She willed herself to relax and wind her own arms around the boy sleeping beside her. She noticed a slight crease in Minato's brow, the frown that tugged at his otherwise softly snoring lips. His grip tightened on her shoulder, and Yukari found herself petting his hair as she held him, muttering sweet nothings until he calmed down again. She had an idea about what her friend was dreaming, considering the small panicked sounds the boy emitted. Yukari rubbed a spot between Minato's shoulder blades, drawing him closer to her so that she could comfort him better. Eventually he settled, his breathing evening once more.

Yukari idly remembered that this wasn't her room. It was, in fact, Minato's. She remembered coming here after everyone had gone to bed. She was worried about Minato, since at the meeting that night, he'd been similar to a shell-shocked wall. A crumbling, shell-shocked wall. Don't get her wrong: Yukari was pretty shocked too. In fact, even now her hands still shook with an unending fear. But when she'd gotten to Minato's door, and he hadn't initially answered, Yukari felt almost like a failure…

*Flashback Start*

"Minato, are you in there?" Yukari asked after her first knock. She then face-palmed. Of course he was in there. She watched the guys head up the stairs before the girls. When no answer came, she knocked again.

"Minato, are you awake?" This time, Yukari could've sworn she heard something fall to the ground somewhere beyond the door. In just her sleep clothes, the girl was doubly nervous and shivered at the sudden chill that aimed at her very core, despite not having a weakness to ice damage.

When a few more things seemed to fall to the ground, Yukari made up her mind.

"Okay. I'm coming in."

Normally, the popular girl wouldn't be caught dead breaking into a guy's room, but the door wasn't locked. In fact, when she touched the handle, the door seemed to open by itself. Yukari's eyes widened, but she steeled herself and opened the door the rest of the way. Her breath caught in her throat.

No amount of mental talk-ups could've prepared her for this.

Minato was sprawled on the ground, facing in the direction of his bed. The blue-haired boy was on his side, and was far too still to be considered alive.

Yukari froze. She didn't know what to do. She thought she saw blood at the corners of her vision, snaking up the walls, dripping from the ceiling. It was difficult for her to breathe. So much so that her knees gave way, dropping her next to Minato's still form. Her numb hands shakily took purchase on his slender neck, searching for a pulse.

Yukari nearly sighed in relief. The pulse was there. It was strong and steady. However, Minato didn't seem to register her presence or the contact of human flesh against his neck. His eyes stared forward, empty, and his body appeared to be made of glass with how fragile it looked. Yukari's heart broke. Her friend, her leader. He looked dead on the inside. He looked like he'd given up, and all anyone had done during the meeting was blame and ostracise him. She turned her head away.

In doing this, Yukari noticed a glass vial glint just below the open window.

With a growing morbid curiosity, the highschooler wondered if it was poison. She wondered if her friend had drunk a whole dose of poison to get away from this world.

Reading the label, Yukari saw that it was a drug to induce muscle laxation, and that it was prescribed to Minato specifically.

"Distilled Baclofen…" She read out loud, "Doesn't this normally come as tablets?"

She looked back to her friend. He was dressed in his winter sleepwear, but with the window wide open and the temperature expected to decrease exponentially tonight, Yukari had no doubt that her friend would get a serious cold, if not hypothermia.

From her vantage point, she noticed her friend was shivering, and there seemed to be a thin line of drool trailing his chin. Yukari sighed. 'Looks like the effects have already kicked in…'

With shaking limbs, Yukari managed to stand up and hoist her friend up, dead weight and all, onto the bed into a more comfortable lying position. His head lolled, and Yukari was quick to get a tissue from the nearby desk to wipe his chin. Minato's sluggish gaze appeared almost lucid for a moment, and he made a small panicked noise from the back of his throat, not seeming to recognise her. Yukari supposed she must look like an imposing shadow ready to devour him. She placed her relatively warm hand onto his chilled cheek.

"Shhhh. Minato, it's okay. I'm just putting you into bed. Don't panic, okay?" Yukari rubbed her thumb soothingly under his normally-covered eye, and waited until her friend's eyelids shut before moving the blankets around him and working on making him comfortable. Minato didn't stop making small whimpers whenever she'd remove her hand from his face, smoothing out stress lines and soothing the fears the drug seemed to have induced. When Minato was properly tucked in, Yukari moved to the room's exit. Whatever conversation she needed to have could wait until morning.

Just as she gripped the door handle, one foot out the door, a coarse groan sounded from the bed.

Yukari turned. Minato, even in his lazed state, had managed to loll his head in her direction. His eyes were squinted, almost shut. His body seemed to tremble under the blankets, and every breath seemed to require effort on his part. Yukari sighed. It was late, and she doubted anyone would be able to help Minato now, especially with Baclofen having a rapid absorption rate. All she could do was wait out the effects, which would only last till sunrise, given all the variables. Yukari shut the door and slipped the deadbolt in before crossing the room and sitting on the edge of the bed. Minato's weak sounds of distress didn't raise in volume, but they didn't lower either. She reached up, and begun to pet his hair.

"You really want me to stay." Her voice was soft, barely heard. Minato's eyes closed in content, as if he'd made sense through the fog his mind seemed to be under.

"That stuff you took… You couldn't sleep, huh? Did you ever take it before now? Or was this the first time?" Yukari took note of how her friend's eyes began to flutter, as though Minato fought sleep as well as the drug he'd consumed. She supposed her soothing ministrations did nothing to help him as he seemed to just sigh and relax into her palm. His distress seemed to melt away as he became silent, save for the sound of his breathing in the dark room. With a start, Yukari noticed glimmering streaks line Minato's face.

He was _crying_.

His body didn't shake from sobs like how Yukari's often did. Instead, it lessened its trembling as his eyes remained shut. Tears leaked down his face in watery splashes, much like water paint. His brow scrunched up in pain, but as far as Yukari knew, it wasn't physical. The drug didn't allow for the patient to feel physical injuries anyways. No, this run much deeper than that.

With that in mind, the girl determinedly took her hand from Minato's face. His eyes squinted open in confusion, but fluttered shut shortly after. Despite his eyes being closed, Yukari knew her friend wasn't asleep. His breath was still shallow and only slightly uneven. She shifted the blankets aside so she could fit onto the bed beside him. In the dark, she shifted and turned until she had the blankets comfortably covering both teens, and then laid on her side so she could wrap her arms around Minato's slack form. He seemed to lean into her, despite not having any control over his muscles at that point in time. It was fine, though. Yukari instead turned her focus onto calming the obviously distressed boy enough to sleep.

It was a long time before either of them surrendered themselves into the arms of sleep.

*Flashback End*

Yukari sighed, resigned to her fate. After all, it's better than the alternative. Last night had been a disaster, plain and simple. What Junpei had said… It was like he was blaming Minato for every little thing that'd gone wrong. It was like he _enjoyed_ putting his friend on the spot, and punching him like it was no big deal.

 _Come to think of it, it's all your fault…_

Yukari wasn't the one it was directed to, but even she could feel the malice in that statement.

 _You had that_ _ **thing**_ _inside of you! You_ _ **raised**_ _it! It's all your fault!_

Junpei was just scared, and looking to take his anger and frustrations out on something. But…

That didn't mean he had to take it out on his friend.

In any case, it'd seemed to have a catastrophic impact on Minato, considering he went to the trouble of drugging himself out of it. She still didn't know where someone would be able to find a doctor willing to prescribe that sort of medicine. The only doctors available in Iwatodai were at the General Hospital, and they wouldn't have these kinds of drugs…

That meant he'd gotten these at the last place he'd lived before SEES.

Minato's arms lay limp along her torso. Yukari couldn't help but trace patterns along his back and arms as a means to keep herself busy. There were so many thoughts rolling around in her head. All of them started and ended mid-way through, as though the thoughts themselves didn't want to be heard. That was a disconcerting thought, but what's more was remembering last night in full detail. The fight. The venom in Junpei's voice. The way Mitsuru didn't even stand up for Minato when he was punched by Junpei…

Yukari would be lying if she said she wanted to die. She'd be lying if she said she'd rather die knowing when it'd happen rather than living ignorantly, happily, until doomsday finally arrived. So much had happened this past year, and all of it would mean nothing once Nyx came and took it all away…

She looked down to watch her sleeping friend.

He looked at peace, as though last night didn't even happen. Though, Yukari surmised, that could be an effect of the drug. She wasn't fully in-depth with medicine as Shinjiro and Akihiko might've been.

Yukari begun tracing the tear streaks on his face with a thumb. They stained his cheeks so clearly now that the water dried up, leaving salty imprints that'd take ages to scrub off. They seemed to glue his eyelashes together. She lightly brushed each eye over with a knuckle, softly caressing his face with a warm fluttery feeling blooming in her chest. Was this what an unbreakable bond felt like? Yukari closed her eyes, even as Minato stirred and nuzzled into the warmth of her body.

If this truly was an unbreakable bond, Yukari didn't ever want to forget it.


End file.
